Stand with Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan -- with democracy and civilization against tyranny and barbarism
posted by Infidel753 at 5:02 AM
Individualist, pro-technology, pro-democracy, anti-religion. I speak only for myself and not for any ideology, movement, or party. It has been my great good fortune to live my whole life free of "spirituality" of any kind. I believe that evidence and reason are the keys to understanding reality; that technology rather than ideology or politics has been the great liberator of humanity; and that in the long run, human intelligence is the most powerful force in the universe.
God doesn't exist
Evolution happened
Global warming is real
Homosexuality is normal
Aging is a curable disease
The election was not stolen
Everything "spiritual" is a lie
Free speech is for everybody
Humans do not have "souls"
Men can't become women
Fetuses are not persons
Words are not violence
Taiwan is a nation
Pluto is a planet
11 Comments:
This is akin to the Germans who, at one time, sought to purge all non-germanic words from their language.
One guess as to when that time was.
(This was when it ended.)
And it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of "Anglish" enthusiasts are the same general kind of people.
It's an odd thing, to feel so bothered by French, Latin, and Greek words (as most of the foreign-origin words in English are). Maybe they don't like the reminder that their ancestors learned civilization from the Mediterranean world.
The whole concept of linguistic purism strikes me as absurd. No language (or culture) has ever been hermetically sealed. Almost all languages have borrowed vocabulary from other languages, and cultures are richer for it. I don't know anything about the linguistic purity movement, but I can't help but wonder what role xenophobia plays in it.
This is the silliest of ideas. It would mean the state of Colorado be renamed Red. I guess burritos would be called wraps but what about tacos?
I love my inclusive American language and fart in the purists direction (thank you Monty Python)
Ahab: Very true. Every language I've ever studied has a fair amount of borrowed vocabulary (Arabic doesn't have much, but there's some). English is far from unusual.
I'd love to see somebody translate a philosophy or science book into "Anglish". Even German needs some Latin and Greek for that kind of stuff.
Connie: For that matter, I wonder what the country itself would be called -- "united" and "state" are of Latin origin, and "America" comes from the name of an Italian explorer. I don't think most people realize how much of the vocabulary is ultimately of foreign derivation, and how much it adds.
Logically they should also stop using this Roman alphabet and Arabic numerals. Back to scratching runes on tree bark?
There's a fine quote about defending the purity of English that applies here:
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- James Nicoll
Plus, these idiots want to re-write scientific and technical language for "purity". As a practicing engineer, I say screw that right in the eye.
Ah, Tim! I wondered if you'd left the net altogether.
That's a good point -- "purification" would mean a vast amount of technical terminology would have to be re-created and then re-learned by engineers and other specialists at the cost of time and energy which could have been better spent on other projects -- and for no practical benefit. The cases where purification has succeeded were cases like Turkish in the 1920s -- languages which didn't have much technical terminology established yet, and few educated people to be burdened by the changes.
Infidel -- What you and Tim said about scientific/technical language! I'm perfectly happy to keep using words like "hydrogen" and "uranium" over "waterstuff" and "Ymirstuff".
My job involves research and statistics, so I wonder how statistical terms such as "chi-square", "median", and "standard deviation" would be rendered in Anglish. "Chi" is a Greek letter, and almost all of the other words I just listed have Latin origins. The Anglish equivalents would probably sound surreal.
Ahab: Surreal and contrived. Out of curiosity I looked up "Ymir" -- it's the name of a Norse ancestral god, with no obvious connection to uranium.
I see no point in purging our language of all connection with the true Greco-Roman origins of our civilization. Besides all the practical problems, it would be a kind of lie. Our ancestry (well, mine and that of the original English-speakers) is Germanic, but the roots of our culture and civilization are not.
Uranium's name comes from the Greek god Uranus/Ouranos. Both Uranus and Ymir were primordial progenitor deities, but the similarities end there.
If the Anglish enthusiasts really want to replace current element names with Germanic ones, it'll take them a while to pick out mythological analogs. Many elements derive their names from Greek/Roman mythological references, such as Argon (city of Argos), Titanium (Titans), Niobium (Niobe), Cadmium (Cadmus), Iodine (Io), Promethium (Prometheus), and Cerium (Ceres).
Hey, they've already got thorium. At least in chemistry there are only a hundred or so elements. Redoing the Latin names of the million-plus described biological species would keep them busy for a while. It might even prove to be their, er, kryptonite.
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